Chapter One: The United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue

Motivations behind the FOIP strategy; More significant than a change in nomenclature?; The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’s revival and its significance; Australian, Japanese and Indian approaches to the US Indo-Pacific Strategy; China’s response to the Indo-Pacific Strategy; Conclusion

US President Donald Trump unveiled his vision for a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, on 10 November 2017.1 His speech ended a year of uncertainty over the new administration’s preferred approach to the region, which grew out of Trump’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and his public repudiation of Barack Obama’s ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalance’ to Asia.2 For the first ten months of Trump’s presidency, allies and partners of the United States had been unsettled by his pledge to put ‘America First’; his fractious interactions with some of his counterparts, including then-prime minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull; and his complaints about the cost of US military commitments in the region, especially in Japan and South Korea.3 The praise Trump had lavished on Chinese President Xi Jinping during a summit at his Mar-a-Lago resort in early April 2017 also unnerved allies and partners, as did the possibility that Trump might try to strike a grand bargain with Beijing over trade and security that could run counter to their interests.4

Trump’s speech at Da Nang addressed at least some of these concerns. It unequivocally committed the US to the idea of the ‘Indo-Pacific’, a strategic concept that had already been in circulation for a decade in various regional capitals, including Canberra, New Delhi and Tokyo.5 His address made it clear that the administration was serious about trying to bring what it perceived as ‘fairness and reciprocity’ into its trading relationships in the region. Trump emphasised that this included maintaining open markets and ensuring that ‘private industry, not government planners … direct investment’. In another clear reference to Chinese behaviour, he also indicated that the US was deeply concerned about the protection of intellectual property (IP) and alleged violations of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules intended to restrict ‘product dumping, subsidised goods, currency manipulation, and predatory industrial policies’ – contentious issues that metastasised into a trade war in 2018. In terms of regional security, Trump singled out North Korea’s nuclear programme as a particular priority but also pledged to defend what some US allies and partners termed the ‘rules-based order’.......

https://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-dossiers/asiapacific-regional-security-assessment-2019/rsa19-03-chapter-1

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/10/17/editorials/u-s-china-declare-trade-war-truce/#.XcD6VOgzaUk

https://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-dossiers/asiapacific-regional-security-assessment-2019/rsa19-03-chapter-1

https://www.pressreader.com/